The Politics of Slanderby Bill Berkowitz
www.dissidentvoice.org
August 27, 2005

Late
in the evening of Wednesday, August 24, the Drudge Report
featured the headline -- "ANTI-WAR PROTESTERS TARGET WOUNDED AT ARMY
HOSPITAL" -- followed by this text:

"Anti-war protestors besieged wounded and
disabled soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C, a new web
report will claim!

"CNSNews.com (Cybercast News
Service) is planning to run an expose on Thursday featuring
interviews with both protestors and veterans, as well as shots of
protest signs with slogans like 'Maimed for a Lie.'

"The conservative outlet will post video
evidence of the wounded veterans being taunted by protesters, the
DRUDGE REPORT has learned. (Anti-war Protesters Target Wounded at
Army Hospital)"

The following day, Cybercast News
Service issued its report stating that, "Code Pink Women for Peace,
one of the groups backing anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan's vigil outside
President Bush's ranch in Crawford Texas, organizes the protests at Walter
Reed as well."

According to CNSNews.com, supporters
of Bush's War on Iraq "call the protests, which have been ignored by the
establishment media, 'shameless' and have taken to conducting
counter-demonstrations at Walter Reed."

"The [anti-war protesters] should not be
demonstrating at a hospital. A hospital is not a suitable location for an
anti-war demonstration," Bill Floyd of the D.C. chapter of
FreeRepublic.com told CNSNew.com. "I believe they are
tormenting our wounded soldiers and they should just leave them alone,"
Floyd added.

CNS.com also pointed out that, "Code
Pink, the group organizing the anti-war demonstrations in front of the
Walter Reed hospital, has a controversial leader and affiliations...Code
Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin has expressed support for the Communist
Viet Cong in Vietnam and the Nicaraguan Sandinistas."

According to the website of Code Pink, their
weekly vigils at Walter Reed Hospital -- which began in March -- actually
bring together peace activists, soldiers, military families and
neighbors," and are aimed at "remind[ing the public] that physically and
psychologically wounded soldiers are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan
every night."

Seriously wounded soldiers arrive at the
hospital "under the cover of darkness," and Code Pink maintains that it
believes that "the nighttime arrivals are scheduled on purpose so as to
prevent the public from knowing about the numbers of soldiers wounded and
the severity of their injuries."

On March 31, Stars and Stripes,
which describes itself as a Department of Defense-authorized daily
newspaper distributed overseas for the U.S. military community, reported
on a Code Pink vigil: "When we first heard about this [the night-time
return of injured soliders], we were appalled," Code Pink organizer Gael
Murphy, told the newspaper. "Why are they bringing them in only at night?
Is it because they don't want the media to cover it? Is it because they
don't want Americans to see the real cost of this war?"

The Stars and Stripes story makes
no mention of the wounded being "taunted" or "besieged."

"These are not protests, they are vigils
calling for more support for the veterans. We always do them with military
families and we get extremely positive responses from the families of the
wounded soldiers. In my first DC vigil, the wife of a wounded soldier took
me inside to meet her husband," Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of Code Pink,
told MediaTransparency.

"In the past few weeks, however, new people
have shown up and have tried to change the tone and be more
confrontational. We asked them to remove signs that we found
objectionable. While we aren't certain as to who these people are, we
think they may be related to the FreeRepublic people who are
demonstrating across the street."

"They are trying to create a confrontation
and make us look as if we are not supporting the soldiers. It is a smear
tactic and is totally untrue. We are only there to say that these soldiers
deserve the best possible treatment when they come home."

For the full report by CNSNews.com,
see here.

Cybercast News Service
(originally called Conservative News Service) is a subsidiary of
the Media Research Center -- whose website bills itself as “America’s
Media Watchdog.” MRC is a right wing group monitoring the media, headed by
L. Brent Bozell III. According to SourceWatch, a project of the
Center for Media & Democracy, “CNS was launched on July 16, 1998... as an
‘alternative news service’ to mainstream news sources which reports by MRC
claim have a ‘liberal bias.’"

On August 22, CNSNews.com featured a
story headlined "Backlash Against Cindy Sheehan Gains Momentum," which
reported that Move America Forward, the right wing group that led the
recent so-called Truth Tour to Iraq, was set to begin a "You Don't Speak
for Me, Cindy" tour to counter Sheehan's vigil at President Bush's
Crawford, Texas ranch.

"For the past few weeks, this nation has
heard from those voices in America who advocate surrender in the war
against terrorism," Melanie Morgan, the host of a morning talk show on
KSFO 560 AM in San Francisco who also serves as chairman of Move America
Forward, told CNSNews.com. "Now, it's time to hear from the other
side of this debate.

"We are going to rally Americans together to
show the terrorists overseas that our nation has not lost its resolve nor
its nerve to prevail in the fight against their violent, extremist
agenda," Morgan added.

According to CNSNews.com, the group
is expected to “begin airing a 60-second television commercial promoting
the ‘Support Our Troops & Their Mission' rally in Crawford, Tex. The ad
[prepared by the Sacramento, California-based public relations firms Russo
Marsh & Rogers] is expected to air nationwide on cable news networks or
can see seen at the group's website [at
moveamericaforward.org].”

Whatever one thinks about comparing the
chaotic occupation of Iraq with the situation during the war in Vietnam
one element is consistent: As the occupation of Iraq continues to slide
into chaos, pro-war advocates are getting more vigorous and vituperative
with their criticisms of the anti-war movement.

When the going gets tough for supporters of
President Bush's war on Iraq, they go on the attack. Typical targets have
been liberal academics on America's college campuses, Hollywood
celebrities who have dared speak out against the war, liberal talk show
hosts, and of course, the anti-war movement. Radical filmmaker Michael
Moore was the right's whipping boy for most of 2004, and Cindy Sheehan has
become its target of choice this summer.

In the months leading up to the US invasion
of Iraq, millions of people in cities around the world demonstrated
against the impending war. Despite that outpouring of sentiment, during
the pre-invasion debate, Bush Administration supporters went after the
anti-war movement with gusto. Moreover, after the invasion began, those
who spoke out against the war were quickly labeled unpatriotic,
anti-American or sympathizers of the brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein.

Now, shaken by the actions of and nationwide
support for Sheehan, Bush Administration surrogates are once again
focusing on the anti-war movement. As Sheehan has continued her vigil
outside President Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch the president’s poll
numbers related to Iraq have tumbled. The growing anti-war sentiment in
this country is exemplified by the spirited crowd of more than 2,000
protesters who showed up in Salt Lake City, Utah, as a response to
President Bush’s visit to the city to address the national convention of
the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

On Tuesday, August 30, 2005 the Washington,
DC-based Heritage Foundation, the premier think tank of the conservative
movement, will turn its sights toward the anti-war movement in an event
entitled, “The Politics of Peace: What's Behind the Anti-War Movement?”

The main speaker at the event is John J.
Tierney, whose book, The Politics of Peace, was published this
year by the Capital Research Center. According to the Heritage
Foundation’s promotional materials, the book is an examination of the
“current anti-war protest” against the Iraq War, and the Bush
Administration “reveals a pedigree going back at least to the Vietnam era
and beyond to the ‘progressive’ and protest politics of earlier decades.”
Tierney argues that, “The leaders of the ‘anti-war’ movement today are
leftists in ideology,” and they “almost all oppose capitalism and believe
in socialism.” In addition, “many are Communists.”

In the Introduction to the book, Tierney
argues that "The irony of the modern 'peace' movement is that it has very
little to do with peace -- either as a moral concept or as a political
ideal ... The leaders of anti-war groups are modern-day Leninists ...
street revolutionaries [attempting] to use reactions to the war on
Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein as a way to foment radical political change at
home."

"This appears like a real attempt to smear
the peace movement," Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of Global Exchange and
Code Pink, told
Media Transparency via telephone from her San Francisco office.
"It is interesting that it is coming at a time when the peace movement is
beginning to represent the feelings of the majority of the American
people."

"In reality, this is the first time since
the war began that the right is on the defensive. To claim that the
anti-war movement is anti-American is a move fueled by desperation, and I
don't think it is going to resonate with the American people who now feel
that this war isn't worth fighting."

Benjamin also told Media Transparency
that the attack on the anti-movement is coming at a time when more
Republicans are seriously questioning the war.

John Tierney has a long and impressive
resume. He is currently Faculty Chairman and Walter Kohler Professor of
International Relations at The Institute of World Politics; he has served
as Special Assistant and Foreign Affairs Officer at the U.S. Arms Control
and Disarmament Agency from 1981 to 1993; he participated in various
national security negotiations for the U.S. Government; was Executive
Director of the Congressional Caucus on National Defense and the National
Security Research Group at the U.S. House of Representatives; and he was
Chairman of the Politics Department at the Catholic University of America.

Back in 1995, when Tierney was a Visiting
Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, he wrote one Executive Memorandum
entitled "Abolish the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency," and another
entitled "The U.S. Still Needs Military Bases In Panama."

Founded in 1990, the Washington, DC-based
Institute for World Politics describes itself as an "independent graduate
school of statecraft and national security affairs." Between 1993 and
2003, the Institute received nearly $3 million from such conservative
foundations as the Earhart Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley
Foundation, the Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation and the Charlotte and
Walter Kohler Charitable Trust.

It is significant that Tierney’s book was
published by the Capital Research Center (CRC), a Washington, DC-based
outfit, which for the past 20 years has steadfastly dedicated itself to
defunding and disempowering the progressive non-profit sector and
“exposing” the foundations that fund them. Through its four flagship
publications: Organization Trends, a monthly analyzing the
activities of advocacy organizations; Labor Watch, a monthly
tracking “the increasing activism of labor unions that are trying to
achieve through political coalition-building the goals they have failed to
achieve at the bargaining table”; Foundation Watch, a monthly
“examin[ing] the grantmaking of private foundations"; and Compassion &
Culture, a monthly "highlighting the work of small, locally based
charities that help the needy,” CRC staff does some of the research work
of the right wing movement.

In an introduction to an excerpt of The
Politics of Peace published in the March issue of Organization
Trends, Robert Huberty, the Executive Vice President and Director of
Research at CRC, maintained that, "Many leaders of the principal anti-war
organizations today are members of Communist splinter groups. They have
ties to North Korea, Cuba and Maoist China. Some have political roots in
radical anti-Vietnam war groups like Students for a Democratic Society ...
Others trace their origins to the heyday of the U.S. Communist Party.
Huberty argues that these facts "have been obscured by in false media
depictions of a grassroots and idealistic anti-war movement."

"On the face of it," Benjamin said, "it is
ridiculous to characterize United for Peace and Justice as anti-American.
This is an organization that is comprised of more than 1,000 local
organizations, and whose membership includes a fair share of religious
leaders, military families, and veterans."

"The way they tried to smear Cindy Sheehan
was despicable and didn't work very well; the way they are trying to
position politicians calling for an exit strategy also reflects that. We
in the peace movement feel like we are turning a corner and that we have
greater possibilities of reaching and convincing the American people."

Bill Berkowitz
is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His
WorkingForChange.com column Conservative Watch documents the strategies,
players, institutions, victories and defeats of the American Right.